The Real Deal Los Angeles

The Real Deal Los Angeles

Rent control ballot initiatives fail in Pasadena, Long Beach, Inglewood

Advocates failed to gather enough valid signatures to put the question to voters

June 25, 2018 08:17AM

Multifamily homes in Pasadena (Credit: TalkToPaul)

California voters will decide in November whether to maintain over overturn the state’s restrictions on rent regulations. But residents of three Los Angeles County cities where rent control does not exist, won’t have the opportunity to enact local measures.

In Pasadena, Long Beach and Inglewood, rent control advocates failed to submit enough valid signatures to put the question to voters in the November ballot. Advocates there wanted to establish local rent control regulations, according to Curbed.

Organizers in Pasadena and Long Beach missed deadlines to turn in their signatures; and in Inglewood, organizers submitted around 14,000 names, but more than half were found to be invalid.

California voters in November will decide whether to maintain or repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rent Control Act. Last week, repeal supporters submitted the required 408,000 signatures required to put the question on the ballot.

The 1995 law places significant restrictions over local rent control laws. Specifically, it bars cities from placing rent control measures on any housing unit built after 1995, any single-family home and any condominium unit.

It also bars local governments from requiring landlords to keep any already rent-controlled unit in the program, allowing landlords to deregulate units and charge market-rate rents when a rent-controlled tenant moves out.

It also essentially freezes certain aspects of local laws as they existed before Costa-Hawkins. That means measures in cities that do have rent control, like L.A., cannot be updated in significant ways. [Curbed]— Dennis Lynch